Environment committee  I just wanted to make a similar comment, from a Canadian perspective. There's been a lot of talk about climate change. I mentioned that habitat loss wasn't as big an issue for us here, but that's only because we've been lucky so far. People only care about things they know

Environment committee  Thank you for that. I just wanted to clarify that for the record here. This committee has sometimes avoided the discussion of climate change, but I think it's a very relevant discussion for the environment committee, and I'm glad to have any opportunity to point to it.

Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Bevington. We're certainly not in any way suggesting that climate change isn't a major factor here. It is. We are seeing changes. We don't know what the long-term effects of those changes will be. We're monitoring that, but we're not yet in a position to be able

Environment committee  , is that research? Do you need more coordination when it comes to habitat loss, or impacts of climate change, or what's happening in other jurisdictions?

Environment committee  We have enjoyed federal support in a number of areas. We recently presented to the standing committee regarding the federal support received around biomass in association with climate change. That is something we certainly look to continue. As Linda said, we need general support

Environment committee  If it is a circumpolar issue, it would kind of drive you, at least intuitively, to the notion that climate change is affecting the herd, because the Arctic is warming and the sub-Arctic is warming with it, and species that have never been observed there are moving north

Environment committee  , the predator declines as well. I'll ask Lynda to speak to some of the specifics, but Mr. Bevington alluded to climate change. We've often said that this decline, as Lynda alluded to, is a 30- to 50-year cycle. There's no one thing that causes it, and as a result of that there's no one

Environment committee  Are you familiar with the work of Anne Gunn, previously a caribou biologist with the Government of the Northwest Territories, on the impacts of climate change on these herds?

Environment committee  Dr. Gunn has suggested that the trends in caribou herds are likely linked to climate, and we don't really understand that very well. We're not sure what the changes due to climate change are going to be and how they are going to affect those cycles.

Environment committee  We haven't seen so much related to the decline in caribou, not yet. We don't know if that's going to happen. It doesn't seem to be one species replacing another, but we are, with climate change, seeing new species moving north. Certainly we're seeing more white-tailed deer

Environment committee  . Hanging our hat on climate change doesn't get it. Climate has always changed; it always will. I would like your thoughts on.... In my part of the world, rabbits, for example, have a cycle. When the coyote and fox populations are up...and if there's disease, if they get overpopulated

Environment committee  Absolutely. There are natural biological cycles that seem to be present in every wildlife population. I couldn't agree with you more on climate change. We've had big weather events forever, and we'll probably continue to have them forever. Populations of wildlife are never

Environment committee  Yes. There are larger factors at play in the world than what hunters themselves can control for the wildlife. That's the point that I think people have to understand as well, that climate change and industrialization are things that actually do impact on the animal populations.

Environment committee  , no caribou, no caribou—and then they came back. It may be related to climate change. It may just be some cycle that we don't understand yet.

Environment committee   years ago has made a great recovery. I don't think it's doom and gloom for caribou. I think they will recover. As to how much of it is related to climate change and how much of it is a natural cycle, I don't know.